by Jo Cotterill
“It’s cause they’re designer, isn’t it?” says Kayma.
“They’re five dollars at Walmart!” I protest.
Sanvi flicks through more pages. “Not many Indian girls.”
“Or black ones,” says Kayma.
“Or fat ones,” I add. “None, in fact. Everyone is thin, thin, thin.” I turn the pages, noticing my fingers, square and chunky. These clothes . . . they’re not for me. Nothing about this world is for me. Fashion is for skinny people. And people with a lot of money. Even if I had two hundred and fifty-nine dollars, I wouldn’t spend it on a pair of pants. They’re just pants, after all. Two hundred and fifty-nine dollars could get you a vacation. Or horse-riding lessons. Or a year’s supply of Kit Kats. I stare at the skinny ladies. I bet they never get to eat a Kit Kat. They’re missing out. Kit Kats are one of the joys in life.
“I’ve got loads,” Kayma says, sliding over a pile of the thick magazines. “Dunno what to do with them.”
“Burn them,” I say helpfully.
“We could make a collage,” Sanvi says. “Maybe.”
I tip over the pile. They make a waterfall of thomps on the carpet. “What’s this?” Tucked between the magazines is a slim paperback titled Your Body and Its Changes. A cartoon girl stands on the front, hands on hips, confident.
Kayma wriggles across the floor to have a look. Then she lets out a giggle. “Ohh! I know this book! Fliss had it on her shelves, and I used to sneak a peek at it every now and then. It’s full of rude stuff!”
“Rude stuff?” I ask, intrigued, and open it to a random page. There’s a diagram of something that looks vaguely like a lake with two rivers running into it and an opening to the sea. I read the description underneath: The female reproductive system. “What the what?”
“I remember that,” Sanvi says. “We did that last year.”
“We did?” I stare at the picture. “Ohh . . . right! Yeah, I think I remember it. Ms. Jones showed us that video about babies and told us all off for being silly.”
Kayma laughs. “That was sooo embarrassing. And they kept saying . . . certain words in the video.”
Sanvi is going very red in the face. “It wasn’t nice,” she says primly. “It was private stuff, we shouldn’t have had a lesson on it like that.”
“Toss me the book,” Kayma says. “I want to dare Jelly.”
You can’t turn down a dare, especially when it’s from your best friends. “What kind of dare?” I ask apprehensively.
She flips through the pages and then hands back the open book. “Dare you to read this bit aloud in the voice of that guy who narrates those stuffy nature specials—Attinbury.”
“Attenborough,” I correct her. I look down at the page, titled Periods. “Oh, Kayma, nooo!”
“Dare!”
I clear my throat and prepare my best David Attenborough voice. “Once a month, the lining of the womb thickens in preparation for an egg. If no egg implants, then the lining breaks down and travels down the vagina, emerging as blood. This is called a period.”
Kayma is laughing so hard she’s crying. “You said . . . vagina,” she splutters.
Sanvi is wriggling in embarrassment. “Stop, please stop!”
“You have to know about them,” I tease her.
“You can’t not know in this house,” Kayma says, wiping her eyes and calming down. “I always know when Fliss has hers because she gets really grumpy and mean. And the bathroom is full of plastic packets, and once the toilet didn’t flush properly and . . . ugh!”
“I don’t want them,” Sanvi says, looking pale. “Periods. Ew. Yuck. I feel sick.”
“You might not get them for years,” Kayma says.
“Maybe you could have all those bits taken out,” I suggest.
“But then she couldn’t have a baby,” Kayma points out.
“I do want a baby,” Sanvi says. “When I’m grown-up.”
“I don’t,” I say firmly.
Sanvi looks shocked. “What, never?”
“Nope.”
“That’s sad,” says Sanvi.
“No, it isn’t,” I retort. “If I don’t want one, I shouldn’t have to have one.”
“I’ve finished this,” Kayma interrupts, holding up her poster. “HULA KEEP OUT” is bright and bold and no one could miss it. “Just need to put it on my door.” She gets up and opens her bedroom door.
Hula falls into the room. “What?” she says, before anyone has a chance to say anything. “I wasn’t listening.”
“You so were!” cries Kayma. She shouts downstairs, “Mooom! Hula’s been listening at my door again!”
There’s no answer from downstairs.
“I wasn’t listening,” Hula insists. She giggles. “Are you going to have babies?”
“Mooom!” Kayma yells even louder. “Hula won’t leave us alone!”
“Let your little sister join in!” comes the shout from downstairs. Kayma’s face darkens with anger.
Hula grins at Kayma. “Mom says you have to.”
“No way!”
Hula gets down on her knees on the carpet. “Pleeeease,” she says, making her eyes big and round, and holding up her hand like she’s praying. Hula only has one hand because years ago she was in a car accident with Kayma’s dad. A truck drove into his car and he died. Hula was in the back in a car seat and survived, but her arm was crushed and they had to cut it off at the elbow. Having only half an arm doesn’t stop her being annoying though. And Kayma’s mom always seems to take Hula’s side.
“No,” says Kayma. She pushes Hula out and shuts the door in her face.
There is a wail as Hula bursts into tears on the other side, followed by footsteps running down the stairs. Then a moment later there’s a shout from Kayma’s mom: “KAYMA, GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW. I WANT A WORD WITH YOU.”
Kayma sighs heavily. “Here we go again.” She tugs open the door and turns to look at the two of us. “Next time we go to someone else’s house, OK?”
Chapter 10
“Why would anyone spend that much money on leggings?” I muse a few days later, watching Mom slice open the top of a large cardboard box which arrived for her: the latest delivery of makeup. “I still can’t understand it. They were just leggings.”
“Designer leggings,” Mom says. “You’re paying for the name and the style. The line of a dress, the cut of a pair of pants . . . the difference between comfort and elegance.” She starts lifting out boxes of eye shadow, powder compacts, and pencils. Everything in the cardboard box is slim and shiny.
I watch her slim fingers carefully place the slim products in neat piles.
“I’ll never be elegant,” I say gloomily.
Mom says absently, “Of course you will. I’ll help you. You’ll turn heads, sweetheart.”
I already do, I think, but not for the right reasons. A tiny frown flickers across her forehead and she leans over to me. “Are you getting a pimple on your nose?”
Instinctively I feel the bridge of my nose. There is a small lump there. It’s sore. “Oh, nooo,” I moan.
“You had one on your chin the other week, didn’t you?” Mom says. “Poor love. That’s what growing up does to you.” She rummages in the box. “I’ve got something that’ll fix it up in a flash. Hang on . . .” She pulls out a tiny tube. “Vanish gel. It’s magic stuff.”
“Thanks,” I say. I have a kind of heavy feeling in my tummy. “I don’t want to grow up. It doesn’t sound like fun at all.”
Mom pulls a funny face. “Oh, I dunno. It’s not all bad. Sometimes growing up means you can get away from things.”
“Grandpa,” I say meaningfully.
“He’s not as bad as all that,” says Mom. “He’s just got . . . high standards.”
“Nan should tell him to be nicer,” I say.
Mom smiles ruefully. “She hates upsetting anyone. She’s not the sort of person to stand up to things.”
“Auntie Maggi is,” I say. Auntie Maggi is Mom’s older sister.
“Are we going to see Auntie Maggi again soon?” I ask hopefully. I’m never quite sure exactly what Auntie Maggi does as her job. It’s something to do with PR, which as far as I can tell involves “coming up with ideas” for people, and being paid for it. She told us once about a “campaign” she’d been working on. It seemed to involve lots of phrases like “mental kaleidoscope” and “bringing the outside inside.” I listened and it all sounded amazing, and then afterward I realized I hadn’t actually understood any of it. I think it was something to do with perfume.
Because she’s in PR, Auntie Maggi gets loads of freebies from events she goes to—“I’m positively drowning in goodie bags, dahling”—and she never seems to want any of them, so I always come home with loads of stuff. That’s why I like going to visit! “Mmm,” says Mom. “Not sure. She’s not in a very good place right now.”
“You mean Detroit?”
Mom laughs briefly. “No, in her head. She’s a bit depressed.” The phone rings and she uncurls herself from the floor. “Well, speak of the devil!” she comments, seeing the number on the screen. “Hello, Mags,” she says, answering. “How are you doing?”
Mom likes to walk around while she’s on the phone. I watch her talking to Auntie Maggi as she wanders across the living room and back again. Today Mom has peachy-brown eye shadow on her lids. I can see that there are at least three different shades on there. She’s lined her eyes with dark brown pencil, and you’d hardly know that she was still sad unless you looked very closely and saw the pinkness under the liner. She’s wearing a tight T-shirt with the name of her beauty business scrawled across it in gold. Tight jeans and bare feet. Shiny painted toes. And not a scrap of fat on her anywhere.
I look down at my tummy, bulging over my skirt, and pull myself up straighter. The bulge remains. As does the heaviness from earlier.
Mom puts her hand over the mouthpiece and whispers to me, “I think this is going to be a long one. Can you make me a cup of tea?”
“Yeah, OK,” I say, getting up and picking my way through the piles of makeup to the kitchen. I put the kettle on and open the cupboard. There’s a pack of cookies, unopened. I make my mom’s drink and a cup of tea for myself and deliver her mug to the living room.
“Thank you,” she mouths at me before saying into the phone, “But didn’t the doctor say you shouldn’t drink while you’re on the medication?”
I take the tea and cookies to my room.
I don’t eat all of them, of course I don’t. Not quite.
A few days later, Mom’s work colleagues drag her out for the evening to cheer her up. I’m asleep when she gets back, but the sound of the apartment door opening wakes me. I hear her thank Rosie and hand over the babysitting money, and the door closes.
I go into the living room, clutching a teddy and rubbing my eyes. “Oh, sorry, love,” Mom says, in the middle of removing her heels. “Did I wake you?”
I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Want a cookie?” she suggests. “Dinner was ages ago.” She brings me the packet of cookies. There are only three left in the pack. “Gosh, where did these go?” she remarks.
I sit down with her at the table and slide a cookie out of the packet. “Did you have a good evening?”
She pauses for a moment, and then a smile spreads over her face. “Do you know, I did. It was lovely.”
I am surprised. She hasn’t smiled like that in days. Since Chris left she’s not really smiled properly at all, and I’ve caught her staring blankly out of the window several times. But tonight she looks different. Sort of softer round the edges.
“We went to the King’s Arms,” she says. “I was a bit worried we might bump into . . . you know. Chris. But he wasn’t there—and that band was back.”
“The ones who played the song about a dog?”
She smiles again. “That’s right! And the lead singer . . . well. He asked me out.”
My heart sinks. “Oh.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says quietly. “And you’re probably right. But he . . . he asked, and somehow . . . I couldn’t say no.”
I bite my lip.
“You wait till you hear him sing,” she says. “He’s so talented.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
Chapter 11
“Today we’re going to be looking at poems and writing some ourselves,” says Mr. Lenck. There’s an outbreak of groans. “We’re building on the work we’ve been doing on families and communication,” he goes on, loading up a poem on the smart board. “I’m going to read you this poem and I want you to think about what the poet is saying and what they’re not saying.”
It’s not a very long poem. It’s called “My Mask” and it’s all about this person’s wonderful life, with lots of friends and a big house and a great job, but the imagery in it is really dark. “Beautiful black curtains hang heavy at my expensive windows, blocking the light” reads one line.
It’s totally obvious what the poet is really saying: that you can have loads of stuff but still be miserable. The whole class gets it—well, all except Harry who just keeps going on about how he’s going to be a professional soccer player when he grows up and he’ll totally have black curtains at his mansion windows, along with a theater in the basement and a swimming pool on the roof.
“It’s sad,” says Verity, “because the poet is trying to be two people. And they can’t tell anyone how they really feel. That’s why it’s called ‘My Mask’—because the person is hiding who they really are.”
Mr. Lenck nods. “That’s exactly it, Verity. And that’s what we’re going to explore through our own poetry. Because all of us, at some point or other, put on a ‘mask’: We pretend to be fine or happy about something because we’re afraid to show how we really feel.”
I sit very still, feeling very cold. This is too close to home. This is me—the poet is me, the things Mr. Lenck is describing, they’re me, that’s what I do. Not occasionally, but all the time. I wear a mask, I laugh things off.
I don’t want to do this work. These poems will be shared—they’ll be read. They might even go up on the wall. I can’t let anyone read my secret thoughts.
With a start, I realize everyone else is reaching for paper and pens. “I don’t know what to write,” Kayma says to me. “I’m just me. I don’t wear a mask.”
Sanvi says thoughtfully, “I’m going to write about the time my brother won a competition we both entered. We had to draw posters, and mine was way better than his, but he won a prize and I wasn’t even a runner-up. I had to pretend to be really happy for him, because my parents told me to. But inside I was really angry and sad.”
“Ugh,” says Kayma. “That’s exactly the right thing for a poem. Trouble is, I just tell people if I’m angry or sad. I’m not good at hiding stuff.” She turns to me. “What are you going to write about, Jelly?”
I’m still paralyzed with panic. I don’t know what to do. And then something kicks in, and I take a breath and smile wickedly and take Option Two, because it’s what I do. “I’m going to write about—” I lower my voice and glance around to make sure Mr. Lenck isn’t anywhere nearby “—this kid who’s meeting the Queen but she really, really needs to use the toilet, and all the time she’s saying posh things to the Queen, she’s terrified she’s going to wet herself.”
Kayma is giggling but Sanvi looks doubtful. “Isn’t it supposed to be based on ourselves? I mean, real-life experiences?”
“How d’you know I’ve never met the Queen?” I say, winking.
“Right,” says Mr. Lenck, “hopefully you’ve all got some ideas now—”
“Sure have,” I mutter, and Kayma giggles again
.
“—so I’d like you to get started, please,” Mr. Lenck adds. “I’m looking for really good examples of imagery in your poems, things that give us clues into the poet’s real feelings.”
It takes me about five minutes to write my poem. It’s full of references to dripping taps and waterfalls. It’s really clever, even if I do say so myself, and I put down my pen in satisfaction.
“Finished already, Angelica?” asks Mr. Lenck, surprised.
“Yup,” I say. “You’re going to love it.”
“Well, sit tight until the others have finished,” he tells me, “and then you can share it.”
I spend the next ten minutes flicking a tiny rubber band at Kayma and making her laugh. Sanvi frowns at me. She’s taking this piece of work very seriously.
Eventually, just as I’m getting really bored, Mr. Lenck calls for pens down, and it’s time for feedback. My hand is first in the air, of course, and Mr. Lenck lets me read it out loud.
I stand up, clearing my throat importantly. “It’s called ‘My Secret Pain,’” I say in a very serious voice.
“Oh,” says Mr. Lenck, “I’ll just remind everyone that one of our core values is Respect, and so whatever is shared in this classroom needs to be treated with respect. So no laughing at other people’s poems.”
“That’s right,” I say, looking sternly down my nose at my classmates. Then I clear my throat again and begin.
There are a few uncertain smiles at the start, and then as it becomes clear what the character’s “secret pain” is, people start grinning and then giggling, and by the last line (where the waterfall flows) everyone is properly laughing.
Except Mr. Lenck, who gives a resigned sigh and says, “It’s very clever, Angelica, but it’s not exactly what I was looking for.”
I squirm in my seat as other people stand and read theirs out. Some of them aren’t very good, but everyone else has tried to write a serious, rather than a funny, poem. Verity Hughes’s is about her parents’ divorce. Her mom was so angry with her dad that she told Verity she didn’t want to talk about him ever again. So Verity had lots of conversations with her mom where she had to bite her tongue to avoid mentioning him, which was really hard. Her poem contains lots of references to locked boxes and closed doors, which is clever because it’s like all the things she wanted to say had to be locked up so that she didn’t upset her mom.